Tour De France

Three event inspired artworks

There was great excitement when Stage 3 of the Tour de France started from Cambridge in 2014. I was excited to be invited to make some related art for an exhibition in Cambridge Contemporary Art. I spent time thinking about how to make pieces that could represent both the town and the event. As Cambridge is one of the worlds most well known universities many people choose a Cambridge tee shirt as a souvenir. A yellow shirt is the marker of the leader of the Tour. I combined the two using metal type ornaments and a sunny yellow colour. Cambridge is famous also for bicycles and there are constant irritations between cyclists and drivers. The stage was starting from Parkers Piece in Cambridge where there is a multi storey carpark, parking entry is by ticket. These tickets happen to be partly yellow, I collected a great many and began drawing bicycles on them. Collectively they speak of the local transport issues as well as being visually reminiscent of a rather motley peloton. I was also invited to make a sculpture from recycled bicycle parts to form part of a city centre Sculpture Trail. The bicycle shop where I got the part was right on the route of the Tour. A bicycle is nothing without its rider so I made my collection of scrap parts into a person. The sculpture is kinetic using a pedal as the pivot on which the no cycling/map of Cambridge turns. I called the scultpure Champion mixing the air of success with the atmosphere of Yorkshire where the Tour de France started in the UK.